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Lance Armstrong and Oprah: Destroying What Was Left of His Reputation

Lance Armstrong admitted a lot of wrongdoing during his 90-minute interview with Oprah Winfrey tonight, but he did almost nothing to win back the sympathy of the world. In fact, he said things that are bound to offend people deeply.

She began with yes and no questions about different kinds of doping he had done as he won seven Tour de France bicycle races, and in answering them he quickly admitted to a broad range of illegal and unethical drug use. How could he have so “brazenly and defiantly” lied about what he had done, Oprah then asked. “This story was so perfect for so long,” he coolly said, “. . . behind that picture and behind that story there’s momentum. . . . It just gets going, and I lost myself in that. . . and I was used to controlling everything in my life.” It was as if to say he was a victim of circumstance, and as the interview went on he portrayed himself as someone who had had no choice but to cheat, because everyone else did, and, that done, he had no choice but to lie and cover up and furiously attack his accusers.

Oprah asked about reports that he had forced his teammates to do drugs too. Absolutely not, he responded. He insisted that what they did was entirely up to them. “The culture was what it was,” he said, and “It was a competitive time. We were all grown men. We all made our choices.”

Why did he attack and even sue people who told the truth about what he had done? “Because it’s the second time in my life when I can’t control the outcome.” In other words, he felt he had been trapped by his drug use, just as he had been trapped by cancer.

It was all very easy, he admitted. He never even had any doubt he’d win the Tour de France: “The winning was almost phoned in.” And, most amazingly, he doesn’t believe he really cheated anyway. He said cheating is when you do something to gain an unfair advantage; he “didn’t do it to gain an advantage on a foe. I saw it as a level playing field.” Every serious contender in the Tour de France used drugs; Armstrong was, in effect, just playing by the unofficial rules.

Perhaps his ugliest moment came in discussing Betsy Andreu, whose husband, Frankie, was part of his team. She had testified that she had heard Armstrong admit to doctors in 1996 that he had used performance enhancing drugs. He had attacked her viciously, and tonight when she came up, he chuckled and said, “I did call her crazy. . . . I called her crazy, I called her a bitch, but I never called her fat.” That line left him smiling.

He said, with a spark of more somber emotion, that he wished he could go back to last year, when the United States Anti-Doping Agency finally charged him with using illicit drugs. He said he wished that instead of his customary vehement denials, he had said, “Give me three days, let me call some people, let me call my family, mother, sponsors, foundation” and tell them he was going to confess everything.

But that was not in his nature. Lance Armstrong was and is a born fighter through and through. Life was and apparently still is about playing to win. He thinks the same fierce spirit that helped him defeat cancer helped him win seven Tours de France. How, in fact, could that not be true? And he is fighting now. He admitted guilt tonight, but even when he said “I will spend the rest of my life trying to earn back trust and apologize to people,” he was combative. He followed that with a startling assertion that “I am happier today than I was then, for a whole host of reasons.”

Oprah, amazed, said, even now, as you confess so much wrongdoing, you are happier than through your years on top of the world? He answered, “I said I’m happier today, not yesterday.”

Lance Armstrong is out doing battle. That’s who he is. But his battling is unlikely to win back the love of millions that he once enjoyed. He has done too much damage to too many, and he shows too little real compunction for that.

Tomorrow, however, Oprah will ask him about his family, his children, his parents. Perhaps that may reveal a different side of him.

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So who is surprised? Many thought he did use. I only believe it now. The reason being that I am amazed at the lengths people went who were in this sport or reported on this so-called guilty man. Like I have thought if true and he admits like I found today there’s a lot more than most guessed. Meaning in this world most care about the juicy story. I find it amazing how this was in my eyes let to happen but it seems comparable to steroids in MLB. High officials in this sport and anyone close to the sport IMO knew while others did not. But since the reality happens to be everyone of the bikers were engaged in the steroid activities or even a large %, this is the other part of the story that will never be told. The whole sport during the cheating had gained a lot of attention and money but no cheating stories then except the typical. After the money is made the same people who act like they didn’t know start the”wait we might have a problem” Washing their hands and time to throw people under the bus. Baseball was falling in deep after the strike many suspect steroids , no name players are tested, home run race starts, money rolls in, records are broken then guess what? “Wait, we might have a problem” They are all in on it. I am not talking about just the athletes. Will the whole story be told????

Good stuff, Fred. I’m curious also, though, to hear your thoughts on perhaps a more difficult question: What about Oprah?

I imagine Lance’s PR reps chose her as his interviewer because they wanted somebody whom Lance would respect and regard as having been above the fray. Perhaps they hoped she would be a sympathetic interviewer, and perhaps they hoped her sympathy would elicit the viewers’ own forgiveness.

So will the fact that she conducted this interview rather than, say, Bob Costas affect Lance’s efforts to restore his reputation?

And oh, by the way, what about the effect of all this on the reputation of Oprah? She’s a national treasure, after all. Did this interview affirm the public’s perception of her? Add new wrinkles?

Thanks, Stephane. I think she’s a powerful interviewer because she can be tough and direct without seeming nasty. I’d think this could only help her reputation. Some of the of previews for other programs on her channel looked liked sort of seamy stuff to me, exploitative shows milking people’s family tragedies, for instance. But this seemed to be a high-level, very serious interview about a truly important matter. But three hours? After all that last night we’re only halfway through?

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